Carbon Offsets = Indulgences
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offset
Money quote: "Many environmentalists disagree with the principle of carbon offsets. George Monbiot, an English environmentalist and writer, has compared carbon offsets to the practice of purchasing Indulgences during the Middle Ages, whereby people with money could purchase forgiveness for their sins (instead of actually repenting and not sinning anymore). Monbiot also says that carbon offsets are an excuse for business as usual with regards to pollution.[15] To date, no authoritative studies have been performed concerning offset buyers' behavior (e.g., whether they take other measures to reduce their CO2 output.)"
Also, read this article about Al Gore and his carbon offsets, wherein he uses as much power as he wants, then purchases carbon offsets from a company he owns, thereby enriching himself even more. It's brilliant! I mean, Monty Burns dastardly! Meanwhile, Dubya's mansion in Texas is much more eco-friendly than Al Gore's mansion in Tennessee. And the MSM isn't paying attention? I don't believe it!
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=258075474834657
Carbon Offsets: Al Gore's Big Easy
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 3/6/2007
Environmentalism: Gore's carbon footprint may be the size of Godzilla's, but he eases his conscience with 'carbon offsets.' He buys them from himself. And every time someone else buys them, Big Al gets richer.
Whoda thunk it? Former oilman George Bush, scourge of the environment, lives in a house more eco-friendly than Al Gore, a dwelling that would make Hollywood eco-activist Ed Begley, star of HGTV's 'Living With Ed,' drool.
When Dubya spends time at his Crawford ranch, he's in a single-story, 4,000-square-foot limestone house that a 2001 article in USA Today described as an 'eco-friendly haven.' Even David Roberts, staff writer for the online environmental magazine Grist has called the energy efficiency of the president's home as 'fantastic.'
As USA Today described it: 'Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into purifying tanks underground — one tank for water from showers and bathroom sinks, which is called 'gray water,' and one tank for 'black water' from the kitchen and toilets.' The purified water is funneled to the cistern with the rainwater.
In addition, 'the Bushes installed a geothermal heating and cooling system, which uses about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems use.' As Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, noted: 'It's interesting that Bush seems to actually practice conservation, while Gore seems to want to buy his way out of his obligations.'
Lewis was referring to the buying and selling of 'carbon offsets,' a mechanism that allows Gore's home to consume 20 times as many kilowatt-hours as the average American's. It allows gluttonous energy consumers like Gore to ease their conscience while doing absolutely nothing to curb their own energy use.
Say you want to fly your Gulfstream private jet across the country regularly to Hollywood premieres instead of taking a Greyhound bus. You buy a carbon offset, giving money to people who will do something like invest it in windmills and solar panels to 'reduce' carbon emissions by an equivalent amount. Your are then declared 'carbon neutral' as you continue to pollute.
Speaking of carbon offsets and shell games, guess where Gore buys his carbon offsets? Well, he buys them from a firm call Generation Investment Management LLP, a tax-exempt U.S. 501(c)3 corporation. The chairman and co-founder is Al Gore. In other words, he buys his carbon offsets from himself. Others who buy these offset are really buying stock in Gore's growing business. You, too, can green up his portfolio, if not Earth itself.
The number of companies jumping into this market has multiplied. In 2006, at least 60 sold offsets worth about $110 million to consumers in Europe and North America in 2006, up from a dozen firms selling offsets worth $6 million in 2004. That's a lot of green.
We recently wrote about the conscience-easing of folks like a San Jose State professor who can continue to drive her Lexus guilt-free because she made a contribution to a San Francisco company called TerraPass. It takes her money and invests in wind power and ways to reduce farm pollution, giving her a sticker to put on her car.
Skeptics of this scheme — perhaps we should call it a scam — include, interestingly enough, Steve Rayner, a senior professor at Oxford and a member of a group working on the reduction of greenhouse gases for the U.N.'s International Panel of Climate Change. 'What these companies are allowing people to do,' said Rayner, 'is to carry on with their current behavior with a clear conscience.'
There's a word for this — hypocrisy. The only one with a clear conscience should be Bush, friend of Earth.
Money quote: "Many environmentalists disagree with the principle of carbon offsets. George Monbiot, an English environmentalist and writer, has compared carbon offsets to the practice of purchasing Indulgences during the Middle Ages, whereby people with money could purchase forgiveness for their sins (instead of actually repenting and not sinning anymore). Monbiot also says that carbon offsets are an excuse for business as usual with regards to pollution.[15] To date, no authoritative studies have been performed concerning offset buyers' behavior (e.g., whether they take other measures to reduce their CO2 output.)"
Also, read this article about Al Gore and his carbon offsets, wherein he uses as much power as he wants, then purchases carbon offsets from a company he owns, thereby enriching himself even more. It's brilliant! I mean, Monty Burns dastardly! Meanwhile, Dubya's mansion in Texas is much more eco-friendly than Al Gore's mansion in Tennessee. And the MSM isn't paying attention? I don't believe it!
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=258075474834657
Carbon Offsets: Al Gore's Big Easy
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 3/6/2007
Environmentalism: Gore's carbon footprint may be the size of Godzilla's, but he eases his conscience with 'carbon offsets.' He buys them from himself. And every time someone else buys them, Big Al gets richer.
Whoda thunk it? Former oilman George Bush, scourge of the environment, lives in a house more eco-friendly than Al Gore, a dwelling that would make Hollywood eco-activist Ed Begley, star of HGTV's 'Living With Ed,' drool.
When Dubya spends time at his Crawford ranch, he's in a single-story, 4,000-square-foot limestone house that a 2001 article in USA Today described as an 'eco-friendly haven.' Even David Roberts, staff writer for the online environmental magazine Grist has called the energy efficiency of the president's home as 'fantastic.'
As USA Today described it: 'Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into purifying tanks underground — one tank for water from showers and bathroom sinks, which is called 'gray water,' and one tank for 'black water' from the kitchen and toilets.' The purified water is funneled to the cistern with the rainwater.
In addition, 'the Bushes installed a geothermal heating and cooling system, which uses about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems use.' As Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, noted: 'It's interesting that Bush seems to actually practice conservation, while Gore seems to want to buy his way out of his obligations.'
Lewis was referring to the buying and selling of 'carbon offsets,' a mechanism that allows Gore's home to consume 20 times as many kilowatt-hours as the average American's. It allows gluttonous energy consumers like Gore to ease their conscience while doing absolutely nothing to curb their own energy use.
Say you want to fly your Gulfstream private jet across the country regularly to Hollywood premieres instead of taking a Greyhound bus. You buy a carbon offset, giving money to people who will do something like invest it in windmills and solar panels to 'reduce' carbon emissions by an equivalent amount. Your are then declared 'carbon neutral' as you continue to pollute.
Speaking of carbon offsets and shell games, guess where Gore buys his carbon offsets? Well, he buys them from a firm call Generation Investment Management LLP, a tax-exempt U.S. 501(c)3 corporation. The chairman and co-founder is Al Gore. In other words, he buys his carbon offsets from himself. Others who buy these offset are really buying stock in Gore's growing business. You, too, can green up his portfolio, if not Earth itself.
The number of companies jumping into this market has multiplied. In 2006, at least 60 sold offsets worth about $110 million to consumers in Europe and North America in 2006, up from a dozen firms selling offsets worth $6 million in 2004. That's a lot of green.
We recently wrote about the conscience-easing of folks like a San Jose State professor who can continue to drive her Lexus guilt-free because she made a contribution to a San Francisco company called TerraPass. It takes her money and invests in wind power and ways to reduce farm pollution, giving her a sticker to put on her car.
Skeptics of this scheme — perhaps we should call it a scam — include, interestingly enough, Steve Rayner, a senior professor at Oxford and a member of a group working on the reduction of greenhouse gases for the U.N.'s International Panel of Climate Change. 'What these companies are allowing people to do,' said Rayner, 'is to carry on with their current behavior with a clear conscience.'
There's a word for this — hypocrisy. The only one with a clear conscience should be Bush, friend of Earth.
Labels: global warming, hypocrisy
posted by The Big Seester | 1:01 PM
2 Comments:
Regular Reader DJ sent me this email (apparently comments have been acting up for some people):
I completely agree with everything quoted in this post, particularly the bits comparing carbon offsets to indulgences and the hypocrisy of Al Gore's environmental crusade. Gore asks all of us little people to sacrifice when he's not willing to do the same. At the same time, he's purchasing carbon credits, which are voluntary and unregulated, and thus it is practically impossible to verify the claims of the organizations offering them.
Stuff like this should make anyone concerned with the environment (myself included) furious.
The best ways to help the environment are things you do yourself - like combining trips to reduce the amount of gas you use, lowering the thermostat a degree or two in winter (and raising it a bit in summer), replacing standard lightbulbs with compact fluorescents, and recycling plastics to reduce the amount of virgin oil used in new plastics manufacturing, which has the added benefit of reducing our dependence on foreign oil, if even a little.
Recycling also has the benefit of reducing our need for more landfills, which is especially important in the area of plastics that decompose rather slowly (roughly 400 years before they're completely gone).
Thanks for the input, DJ! I'll respond below...
DJ,
Thanks for replying. Whether or not I am convinced about global warming aside, I definitely agree that we can be reducing waste, and etc. Landfills aren't pretty. And I for one am so sick of plastic bags that get stuck in trees (there's one outside my living room window right now, and it ruins the view!) that I could scream.
I think that we live in a terrific country, where we have used technology to make lots of things way better, and we need to bring other things up to the same standards.
But hypocrisy is absolutely the right word for what Al Gore is doing. I'm not kidding when I compared that to something Mr. Burns would do. (And, as cute and funny as it is when a 104-year-old cartoon tyrant does it, it's NOT funny in real life.)
I have no problem making changes in my lifestyle. I have made significant changes already. I take public transit to and from work (no small feat in the Motor City). I have replaced many lightbulbs with CFLs. I keep the electrical appliances to a minimum. I drive a small, fairly fuel efficient car. I have switched to string bags (and, in all seriousness, part of the reason was the guilt I felt at throwing away dozens of plastic bags) when I grocery shop. I am saving for a new, more efficient HVAC system.
I don't need any kind of rich jerk telling me that I need to do X, Y or Z, when they can't even be bothered to do it themselves. That is part of what gets my hackles up so much. It just makes me so mad I want to spit!
The other thing that interested me in that article is the idea that Dubya has made his ranch very eco-friendly, but nobody's talking about that. Possibly because it's much harder to paint him as evil incarnate if he recycles!
TBS
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